Classic Rock Music News

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Top Van Halen Summer Songs Named

by Peter Hodgson,posted Aug 6 2012 12:20PM

The Van Halen News Desk has listed their top summertime Van Halen songs – not an easy task given the band’s irrefutable status as one of the greatest accompaniments to summer this side of sunscreen and ice cream.

The list is in chronological order rather than an argument-causing qualitative arrangement, and a bootleg of a 1983 cover of “Summertime Blues” makes the list as an honorable mention, as does David Lee Roth’s cover of “California Girls.”

But the list proper includes Sammy Hagar-era summer tributes “Cabo Wabo” and “Summer Nights” as well as DLR-fronted classics like “Panama,” “Beautiful Girls” and “Could This Be Magic.”

This year’s A Different Kind Of Truth also gets a look in, with both “Blood and Fire” and “Stay Frosty” making the list.

Then again, as the generally downbeat Balance was released in the summer of 1995 in the part of the world your humble narrator is based in, I tend to think of songs like “Feelin’” and “The Seventh Seal” when pondering VH summer songs… Did Van Halen ever cover “Cruel Summer”?